Location Info:

In stories that still circulate about dark-haired, distinctive-looking John Altoon, who died too young in 1969, he tells students that they should go give Hiroshima a call, because things in real life are bigger and darker than learning to draw. Or, when French wunderkind Yves Klein visits L.A. and says in a lecture that there we have "inner and out eyes," Altoon, annoyed by the pretension, yells, "There are inner and outer assholes, and you're all assholes." It's all there in his show at LACMA, the sensitivity and the indignation. There's also his obsession with the erotic: Shapes look like body parts that have lost their way, and one series of drawings turns conventional magazine ads into sarcastic sexual fantasies. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire; through Sept. 14. (323) 857-6010, lacma.org.